Summer in the City 2016

Summer in the City has now come and gone and once again I’m left here exhausted and so full of love.

So for those of you who live under a big rock don’t know what SitC is, it’s the UK’s largest YouTube event thingy where a bunch of YouTubers have panels and meet and greets and there’s a chance for them to meet their viewers. I think that’s the best way I can explain it.

This year is my second year volunteering at SitC and I was offered a position as a Meet and Greet Team leader, yes, you are now allowed to feel impressed by my promotion. This meant that I was in charge of about 9/12 green shirts, aka normal volunteers, at a time as well as the YouTubers who were having their meet and greets and it was both very stressful and a lot of fun.

On Thursday the Team Leaders went to the ExCel to meet one another, have a little bonding sesh and a bit of training whilst putting together what felt like a gazillion goody bags for all the attendees…We then took the cable car and went for a Cheeky Nando’s and literally took over the top floor at Nando’s at the O2.

Friday the fun started with the Creator and Industry Day at SitC. This is the day when aspiring YouTubers get to go in and spend an extra day getting tips and tricks from the YouTubers and YouTube people about how to grow their community and create better content and stuff like that. For us volunteers it means it’s the last chance to get everything set.

On Friday I was with the Guest Liaison team and was put on babysitting duty with Niki and Sammy which wasn’t that bad seeing as they’re very nice and as I know their sister we got to skip that very awkward “you’re famous and I’m not” phase.

Saturday the madness started. We had to get our green shirts and brief them on how M&G’s work, put them in to teams, do role playing, go over the rules and just get everything set before the first M&G started at 12. My first ones were the Saccone Jolys, Emma Blackery, Dodie and Evan, Mike Murphy and Cherry Wallis and they were all absolutely lovely and made my job so much easier! I should mention that I was not the only M&G Team Leader, I had three amazing other Team Leaders with me called Meg, Alex and Tyler and our epic Key Team Leader Charlotte. We all kinda kept an eye out for everyone else’s M&Gs whilst people were on their breaks or just if someone had to take care of something else that was urgent. So even though those were the YouTubers I had been assigned for the day doesn’t mean that I was the only one taking care of them or that they were the only ones I was taking care of.

Saturday did run quite late but we managed to all be out of there by 9.30pm which gave me enough time to get some sleep before the Sunday madness.

Sunday was then of course our last day, which once you’re there and you realise that it kinda brings you down and makes you so so so sad. But we powered through it and obviously killed it! I had so many people in my lines that had several M&G’s at the same time that I kept running up and down those queues like crazy. We were also very understaffed on Sunday as Ballot Wristbanding only had 10 people and we were giving them a hand as much as we could. Sunday consisted of taking care of Dodie, Helen Anderson, Jon Cozart, Mike Murphy and Luke Korns, again all so incredibly lovely!

Because I didn’t take a break on Saturday my lovely Key Team Leader practically kicked me out of the M&G area so I would take even just a half a hour break after me insisting I wanted to stick around and make sure Mike was alright as he was feeling a bit under the weather when he came down. But I used my break wisely and went to see my lovely friend Georgie who I hadn’t seen since SitC 2015! Finally got to hug her and catch up very quickly and now I have her whole family helping me meet up with her sometime soon hopefully because we all find it unacceptable the fact that it’s been a year and we haven’t managed to see each other!

Once my break was done I had to go back and help my team with the Jedward M&G which was chaos [Jedward’s meet and greet ran overtime by 1 and a half hours – ed]. Meg and I helped a bit with Directional and Roaming seeing as some of “our” YouTubers were running around having impromptu M&G’s around the merch area and I don’t know, I think both Meg and I felt kind of responsible for them in some weird way haha! After it was all done and dusted and the Jedward M&G was finally done we had a little de-brief and got called on stage by Tom and Ben to say thank you to all us volunteers and say goodbye to SitC 2016.

I can honestly say I cried at the end of the night when the pub was closing and me and Alex had to go get the DLR or we wouldn’t make it home. I’ve had such an amazing experience at SitC this year where I now feel like a part of this amazing family where everyone is just so amazing. I feel very lucky that I get to do this and that they picked me as a Team Leader, specially wanting to do events myself as a full time job. I’m so thankful to Georgie, Lee and Tammy for being so amazing at their job and for trusting that I could do mine. I’m proud of my amazing Meet and Greeters, all the green shirts were just epic and so helpful whenever we needed them they were always there, no arguments, no complaints nothing, just there to help. But my squad, my other M&G Team Leaders, those are the people I just can not even express how grateful I am I have them. Not only because of how hard they worked and the incredible team we make but because I genuinely consider them my friends. We said it so many times during briefings and debriefs that it sounds like it has no meaning any more but we were rock solid, such a strong team and the fact that we had two days to properly bond and build this friendship before getting in to the madness I think is what made us the dream team.